“Yes. She was haunted by many spirits.”
“She was. Some of them her own children. Dead children. I grow tired of dead children, Tracker, children who do not need to die. You talk of stakes. I do not know how to give you any. But right now, two have my child, because of a mistake this one made that Sogolon went desperate trying to redeem. I don’t need a man on a mission and I don’t need a man who believes in kings or gods any more than I need a man who thinks he will shit a gold nugget. I just want someone who when he says, I will bring you your son, brings him to me.”
“I am still doing this for coin.”
“I expect no less.”
“Why did you not tell us from the beginning? The truth.”
“What is truth?”
“That is your answer? I would have cared more had your river demon told us everything.”
“You needed more than what you heard to care?”
“What I heard and what I saw were two different things.”
“I thought it was your nose you trusted. You and your company look like you still have wounds to tend to.”
“Me and my company are fine.”
“Nevertheless. Go get my boy tomorrow night.”
I have something for you,” the Leopard said.
I took one of the rooms on the top floor, but facing the snake street. Rugs on the floor, spilled civet musk, and a head plate for sleeping, which I had not seen since my father’s house. Grandfather’s. He threw one of the axes at me and I caught it in the spin. He nodded, impressed. The second was in a harness, which I put over my shoulder.
“I brought something else,” he said, and gave me a jar that smelled like tree gum.
“Black ochre in shea butter, perfect for you. You can blend in dark and shadow without wearing all those rags that makes your nipples and asshole itch. Walk with me.”
Outside, we walked down to the river and along the bank.
“Things have changed between you and this Fumeli,” I said.
“Yes?”
“Or maybe me. You snap at him more but I care less.”
He turned to face me, walking backward again.
“Tracker, you must tell me. How evil was I?”
“Like a mangy dog robbed of his last meal. You were odd, Leopard, one day the man of mirth that made me laugh like no other. The next you’re not just wishing me harm, you bit me in the neck.”
“That is impossible, Tracker. Even at my worst I could never—”
“Look at my scar,” I said, and pointed. “Those were your teeth. Your malcontent was fierce.”
“Fine, fine. Dear Tracker, now I have such sorrow. I was not myself.”
“Then who were you?”
“I promised you a tale strange. Fumeli, how I laugh when I think about it. But this, this boy, fuck the gods. Hear me now.”
We kept walking along the shore, both of us wearing hoods, and the clothing of those devoted to the gods. The old lord’s clothes.
“Fumeli, he thought that he should have me and no one else shall. Especially you, Tracker. Somehow you as friend frightened him more than any other man as lover. But he was frightened by that as well. So he put me under strange enchantment. Something that would make me think myself his all the time. Babacoop.”
“Devil’s whisper? Potion’s so foul no wine can mask it. No beer either. How did he get it past your mouth, Leopard?”
“He did not get it past my mouth.”
“Even as vapor, it burns the nose.”
“Not my nose either. Tracker, how do I tell you this? Fumeli, he would dip his finger in devil’s whisper, and then he would … after that, before the time glass is even flipped he could tell me to do anything and I would do it, tell me to believe anything and I would believe it, tell me to hate anything, and I would hate it. It would be several days, I will remember nothing and whenever we fucked again he would stick more devil’s whisper up my hole.”
“When did you discover his ways?”
“He added another finger.”
I burst out laughing.
“I grabbed him. I saw his hands and said what is this? I tell you true, Tracker, I beat him to near death until he told me, and then I beat him to near death again when he told me.”
I laughed so hard I fell to the sand in a fit. And I could not stop. I would look at his face and laugh, look at his leg and laugh, look at him scratch his ass and laugh. Laugh until I heard my laugh come back to me from the river. He laughed as well, but not as loud. He even said, “Come now, Tracker, surely this could not be so funny.”
“Yes it is, Leopard, yes it is,” I said, and started laughing again. I laughed until I hiccupped. “You know what they say, Hunum hagu ba bakon tsuliya bane.”
“I don’t know that tongue.”
“The left hand is not a new thing to the anus.”
I collapsed in laughter again.
“Hold. Why is he still with you?” I asked.
“A Leopard still cannot carry his own bow, Tracker. And here is truth, he is far better with it than I ever was, and I was very good. Soon as I remembered myself, I whipped his buttocks until he told me where you were all heading to. So we rode back to Kongor, where I have been waiting in this house. Bunshi found us when we crossed into Nimbe and took us here. I might have left had you not come, though.”
“Your poisoned asshole could give me laughs for a whole moon.”
“Laugh. Spare me not. Now all that stops me from killing him is who will carry my bow? Tracker, there is more that I must show you, though you might not want to see it.”
We left the shore and went down an alley that I did not know. Still not many people on the street, even though noon had long passed.
“I still have questions about your Queen,” I said.
“My Queen? Bunshi smuggled her into town in an oil urn. And don’t think that just because she is here in secret she is not giving orders. I thought that water witch answered to no one.”
I stopped. “I have missed you, Leopard.”
He took my hand at the wrist. “Much has happened to you,” he said.
“Much.”
“Did you search for the boy?” he asked.
“Not with Fumeli having me do his bidding I did not. He couldn’t care less for the boy. We were living on the top floor of an abandoned house right in Kongor when I discovered his poison. He was always ready to stick me as soon as I got confused. It went like this, me saying, By the gods, where are we? He says, Don’t you remember? Fuck me some more.”
“Let that be a lesson to all guided by their cocks.”
“Or the other man’s finger.”
We laughed loud enough for people to look at us.
“And the King sister?”
“What of her?”
“She told me you were on your way back to Kongor and not with good news. But the boy was here. This was only a few days ago, Tracker.”
This I take you to, you will not like. But we must go before we get the boy.”
I gave him a nod that said, I trust you. Also this, when scents come together, even those I know, I lose track of who gives what, worse when the smells are so far apart. But down this narrow street, past houses not joined together, until we came to one facing the end of the road, one smell rose above all others.
Khat.
I reached for my ax but the Leopard touched my arm and shook his head. He knocked on the door three times. Five locks someone unlocked. The door opened slow, as if the wood was suspicious. We went inside before I saw her. Nsaka Ne Vampi. She nodded when she saw me. I stood there, waiting for her smart mouth, but she had nothing on her face but weariness. Her hair matted and dirty, the long black dress streaked with dirt and ash, her lips dry and chapped. Nsaka Ne Vampi looked like she had not eaten and did not care. She started walking down a corridor and we followed.
“We go this night?” she asked.
“One night hence,” the Leopard said.
She opened the door and blue light flashed upon the wall and my face. Lightning first, crackling through his fingers up to his brain, and down to his legs, toes, and the tip of his penis. All around him the bones of dogs and rats, gourds of food untouched and rotting, blood, and shit. And on him skin flaking off still, which had become his mark.
Nyka.
Rags lay in a pile to one corner. He saw Nsaka Ne Vampi and spat. Nyka leapt to his feet and dashed at her, the chain at his feet clanging until he ran as far as it would go. It stopped him, just a finger’s reach away from her.
“I can smell your bitch koo from here,” he said.
“Eat your food. The rats know you going to eat them and won’t come out anymore.”
“You know what I going to eat? I going to chew around my own ankle, rip off the skin, rip out the flesh, rip out the bone, until this shackle falls off, and then I going come for you, and cut you deep in your chest, so that he will smell you and come for me, and I will say, Master, look what I prepared for you. And here is what he will do. He will drink from you, and I will watch. Then I will drink from him.”